Chronicla/3/5 (Lorica)
__ForceTOC__ =Odyssey block= The Water Summoner It is three days later; Andar, Qura, Tyl, Yuna and Elysian have arrived in Aureil. It is revealed that Andar was only exonerated the next day by the fact that the money had been stolen anyway despite him being gone. Tyl applauds Elysian's talent for getting things done; Andar is now very mad at Elysian, but he has to keep his promise; and Qura initially applauds Elysian's ability but remains much closer and subservient to Andar. Elysian is well aware of this strange situation and asks Qura what's wrong; she tries to avoid the topic, saying that it's just that she's been with Andar for much longer; Elysian tactfully decides not to push it. The team tries to enjoy themselves at Aureil's famous lake coast, but for some reason there's a warning telling people not to go near the coast; as a stranger explains, something in the sea has attacked the ferries in the lake area, forcing the Lord of Aureil to stop all shipping in the area. Disregarding the warning, the party goes to the coastline, where they are smacked by a massive wave; people nearby help them to their feet and report the incident to the town's lord. Getting a room at an inn, Tyl sets to work using the great amount of faera she had collected to create powerful blast potions. They go to visit the beach a second time, and as a second massive wave comes upon them, they use a blast potion to break it apart. After that it's all peaceful, and although there's no indication that the problem is solved, onlookers go venturing into the water. Watching them in secret, the Lord of Aureil is impressed and grants them a pair of magic slippers allowing them to walk on water by converting the water to ice. Elysian ventures out to sea, using channeling to support himself, as does Qura, using the enchanted slippers; they walk further into the lake and a large water elemental rises up. Using their assortment of spells and channeling, the pair fight against the water elemental, but it seems useless; they are forced to return to land. While Elysian watches, Qura enchants Andar's batch of arrows with create-electropositivity that acts to create a shock upon hitting its target. Tyl meanwhile had observed the properties of the slippers using her Magic Eye and discovered detect-water and delete-heat moieta; she goes off to the surrounding countryside looking for them. Put together, it explains for why the slippers are able to convert the water underneath to ice. After collecting enough, Tyl succeeds in enchanting walk-on-water to the entire team's boots. In the next fight, as everyone watches, the party batters the water elemental with their most powerful to date freezing potions as well as shock enchanted arrows. They are able to destroy the elemental, causing the rogue mage to rise to the surface, high on his column of water. Qura backs off; Elysian creates his own column of water and the two sides use channeling against each other. The mage is good at evading and so their attacks keep missing; meanwhile, he is also able to use his water staff to great effect. Finally, Elysian manages to force the mage to back up to near Qura, and she freezes the submerged mage in ice as well. As everyone on shore cheers for the party's success, they entirely forget about rescuing the trapped mage, who drowns. The party decides that Yuna ought to keep the water staff in a show of thanks for their helping to free the gang the last time they had gone up against Grandryn. The party is hailed as heroes; as a reward, the thankful Lord of Aureil provides the party with 4 riding horses. The Blemished Sylph In the wee hours of the morning, Intael is camping outside of Syrragil with his new horse. Although the other two thought there was something seriously wrong with magic after failing to locate Qura, Intael believed that he could one day find her, though the city wasn't the best place to do so. He uses blood magic, aware that it sleeping people wouldn't notice its use. This time, however, instead of it pointing toward the city, it points away. Realizing that this was his big opportunity, especially since he was the one with a horse, he rides off in the direction of Aureil. He flashes back to a week ago. Judicad, Teal, and Intael had returned to Aeutaril; the local lord had ruled that Teal must return the 200.0 m. silver of brideprice paid to them, forcing them to sell off the new furniture they had just bought at a serious discount, as Sara cries her heart out at losing Qura. With 300.0 m. silver (100.0 borrowed), Intael had bought his horse. Returning to Qura's point of view (and this part occurs a day later), the party has reached Irisfal and are touring the various temples; there seem to be a lot of outsiders living in Irisfal at the moment. Qura is the only one who knows about the religion very well, since she's studied air magic, and so she explains to them that there are 28 deities, each representing a particular facet of life, and that each of them has a temple in Irisfal, as well as up to several others in the rest of Lorica combined; there are also 6 temples for each member of the Hex, one for the pantheon and one for Lorica itself, for a total of 36 temples. Irisfal is a wonder of the world, and a must-visit destination for those who have the means to go on the pilgrimage; since they're already there, why don't they pay homage to the temples? As they visit the place, they hear others mention that the next morning would be the Vestal Virgin ceremony, hence explaining the great deal of people in town, and Qura immediately realizes what it means to become selected. Although Tyl later comes across a peculiar secret entrance to what seems to be an underground component to one of the temples, Qura instead begs the party to let her register for the contest. As Elysian compliments, Qura stands a good chance to win since she's just about the most beautiful maiden in all of Lorica; when it comes to whether she's married, Qura writes that she's not (which is technically true because the brideprice had been returned). Come the next morning, Qura and about 200 others participate in the pageant. First is a test to determine eligibility on grounds of whether they know enough about air magic. Qura passes this without a hitch. Then the maidens must present themselves to the masses of onlookers one by one; as Qura enters the limelight, her friends cheer her on. However, she is suddenly struck by a sharp rock, wounding her and knocking her out of the pageant (which requires no blemishes); Qura is able to see Intael using a hand sign and grinning at her right before she collapses in the utter pain of blood magic. Beneath Orsinius' Temple Qura wakes up a short while later in the inn. Andar explains what had happened: Intael had followed them to Irisfal without them being warned about it, and upon realizing that Qura might attempt to escape his grasp by becoming a vestal virgin (and hence untouchable), he had sabotaged her plan, giving away his position and identity to the sharp-eyed Elysian. As Intael used blood magic to knock her out and then rushed to reclaim the fallen Qura, Elysian, Andar and Yuna had intervened, and the guards had then taken Intael into custody (though probably not for long). The party now goes to the Irisfal jail and visits Intael, where Intael tells them how he had sought them out and what had happened back at Aeutaril. Qura warns Intael not to pursue her anymore; Intael promises that nothing will stop him from getting her. To Intael's horror, Tyl then proceeds to flood the cell with water, Elysian channels it into the shape of a skull and Qura freezes it in place; then they coolly leave, with Qura simply saying that her and her friends' abilities are far more than he can deal with. Now Tyl leads the party back to the secret trap door they had located the previous day, and they slip in, exploring the place; Elysian had meanwhile gone off to do who-knows-what. The party uses their lighting necklaces (made by Tyl) to see the way. There are plenty of useless religious relics lying around, but Andar soon realizes that the place is actually a mini-maze of some kind, with various rooms holding levers which open or close sets of metal-grated doors. Tyl thinks that some dungeon like this would make a great place for a rogue mage to hide his work in, and proceeds to navigate it; however, the others warn that should they screw up, they could get trapped in the maze. And after using the levers to find out what they do and with Andar recording it all, and the girls in the maze, the other three end up getting trapped; Qura is terrified of dying in the dungeon, none of Tyl's magic can do anything, and even Yuna's skills are useless. Realizing he can't risk navigating the maze himself without the possibility of all four of them being trapped without Elysian knowing about it, he instead leaves to go find Elysian. Soon the pair return, Andar mentioning that he can't be sure of solving it successfully and Elysian, upon seeing the maze, coolly proclaiming it's easy. Elysian is able to use air channeling to work the levers without having to leave the first room at all, and proceeds to guide the girls back to safety by opening the doors before them. Yuna is enchanted by his wit and skill and clings to him in adulation; Qura and Tyl look on and give meager complements to Elysian. Andar meanwhile feels particularly left out and useless, and goes to a corner in anger; upon noticing this, Qura goes to stand beside him and offers him her comfort; this act in turn surprises Elysian, who had expected Qura to come closer to him instead. Finally, Elysian uses his wits to access the levers in the proper order, bringing in the team to the last room. There Tyl finds some important relics, but above all, she finds a rogue mage's collection, the only thing new of which is a couple of faera used for purifying spells, and their descriptions. (Tyl has no idea why purification was necessary, since her spells had always worked anyway). After garnering this knowledge, the party heads back but just then the mage shows up and realizing that they had gotten into his collection, he figures they're probably not bad magi, and decides to kill them and sacrifice his collection by trapping them in here: he melts a lever using a focused fire blast, then sardonically tells the trapped party that they've got what they wanted; now they have to pay for it. After trying various things without success, Elysian says that they'll have to "dig" their way out, and using earth channeling he is able to pull away the supports of the temple from below. Chunks of rock and earth fall to the ground as they work their way up; then Elysian realizes that the temple was built in such a way that doing this would compromise the temple. They all agree that it's time they saved themselves at the expense of the temple itself, even though it's blasphemy, and Elysian pulls out the last of the structure's supports with his earth channeling. The entire temple collapses in a terrifying earthquake and Elysian then proceeds to remove the rubble. When the party finally crawls out of the basement, they find everyone staring at them and accusing them of having sabotaged the temple. Elysian is however able to convince everyone else there (except the caretakers of the temple) that the party had been captured and locked up within the basement of the dungeon below and that this was the only means of escape. He casts the party as being the victims, not the criminals, and manages to persuade everyone else that they're innocent, allowing them to leave. As they depart, Andar mentions that it's about time they left Irisfal. Category:Events